Transcript

00:00:00

>> The European Central Bank holding fire for now. Growth weak and inflation low across the eurozone. But policy makers decided against any fresh measures at Thursday's policy meeting. Bank president Mario Draghi saying not enough had changed to warrant action now. Reuters European Politics and Economics Editor, Mark John.

00:00:20

>> I suppose the unsaid reason on top of that will be that they want to keep their gunpowder dry, perhaps some time further on in the year, if inflation remains as low as it is at the moment.>> The ECB has hardly been idle. Rates are at a record low, and it's providing free credit to banks.

00:00:40

Over the past 18 months it's also bought bonds worth over 1 trillion euros, in effect, printing money. But there are still things the bank could choose to do.>> The thing which he did hint they will be looking at, would be to adapting the rules of the asset purchase program, so they could look at buying other classes of assets.

00:00:59

So, we know already that because of the sheer size of this program, it's been going on for 18 months now, they're simply running out of things to buy.>> Any such move likely to be hotly disputed. Hawks will say it opens the bank to buying low quality assets and is tantamount to giving away money.

00:01:16

But with the region's economy still fragile, Mario Draghi is under pressure to come up with something.